


For All The Times You Cried

by SociallyIneptDork



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, Peter Parker Feels, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Whump, Peter is smol, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Precious Peter Parker, Psychological Trauma, Thor Is a Good Bro, Tony Has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark is Good With Kids, broken elevator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 07:40:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14996042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SociallyIneptDork/pseuds/SociallyIneptDork
Summary: The power goes out and the elevator stops while Peter is inside of it. Suddenly the air is a little too hard to breathe.Peter has a panic attack/ meltdown and Thor, Rhodey and of course his Actual Father™ Tony Stark gives him the comfort he needs.





	For All The Times You Cried

Peter was tired. He was bone-tired. The type of tired that managed to crawl its way into your bones and made your head buzz like a thousand bees had snuck in and decided to do some heavy construction on your gray matter. He was irritable, his emotions were all over the place, and most of all he was just really, really done.

Fuck finals, honestly.

He leaned back against the wall of the elevator as it went up, closing his eyes and trying to tell his body "this is not a bed" so that he wouldn't fall asleep right then and there. Between the nightmares about the whole building-falling-on-him thing and the ones of losing every single parental figure he had and the ones about fighting the Vulture while surrounded by fire, he just felt like one of the teenagers on Nightmare on Elm Street who absolutely could _not sleep under any circumstances._

Of course, with finals being here he hardly had to worry so much about that anymore.

Peter opened his eyes just in time to see the elevator lights go out, the elevator stopping abruptly.

"Oh no- come on!" Peter whispered, blinking hard. Could his luck get any worse?

He was trapped.

 _Ohnononononono_.

Too dark. It was _too dark_.

Peter pushed himself against the corner of the elevator, his heart thumping in his chest like a thousand jackrabbits, hands trembling.

The darkness was suffocating, the stillness a physical presence that wrapped around his throat and squeezed. He couldn't breathe. The last time he'd been in an enclosed space in the dark… it hadn't been good. He sunk to the floor, wrapping his arms around his knees and trying to get the images of piercing green eyes and claws and nauseating agony out of his mind.

He hadn't told anyone about it, hadn't really processed what happened yet beyond "it happened" but he didn't want to think about how it _felt_. He tried to avoid it and pretend it didn't happen, mentally doing the equivalent of taking a large stick and slamming it repeatedly against a gigantic wolf to keep it at bay.

He never talked about it. About the way he laid under a pile of concrete and felt like an insignificant speck of light in the universe, knowing that moving wrong could bring one of the steel rods or fragments of pillars down on his soft and breakable limbs. He didn't talk about the way that the concrete crushed against his bones and the dust burned his lungs, his mind racing with a thousand ways that this could go wrong- his bones could break, something might cut into his body, he could die from blood loss, there was the threat of _amputation, decapitation-_

There were too many things that could have gone wrong.

Aunt May was waiting at home for him, he didn't want to- He couldn't- If he didn't get home to her in time she wouldn't even know what happened. He didn't want to stay underneath a ruined building, dying slowly from the weight on his body and the lack of oxygen and pain, all alone in the universe to bear the weight of everything like Atlas. He just wanted to go home. He didn't want to die. He didn't want to die, _he didn't_ , _he didn't, he didn't._

He wasn't ready to die.

Peter was almost unaware of the change in his breathing as he fell hard into the dark corners of his mind, unaware of everything except for the burning in his lungs as his body demanded oxygen that it wasn't receiving.

He was tired.

His mind was in disarray, he was terrified, and all his mind and body agreed on at the moment that the only obvious solution to the fact that the elevator was broken was to sit in the corner and cry like a lost child.

Tears streaked down his face as the flimsy dam he'd built up to keep his emotions from drowning him broke and the pain and fear rushed forward, as overbearing and heavy as a weight tied around his ankles as he sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

The Vulture had claws that had dug into Peter's body like knives piercing into butter, ripping and tearing at his clothes and the tender skin underneath. Toomes' green blazing eyes had stared at him while he'd done it, looking down at Peter, who suddenly realized what it felt like to be the ant under someone's boot.

Small, inconsequential, helpless.

Weak, frightened, godless.

Broken.

Mangled.

Afraid.

 _Tired_.

The lights switched back on, the elevator only jostling Peter even more as it continued its path upwards. In the back of his mind he had the vague thought that he was in the elevator of Mr. Stark's compound and that at any given moment someone could walk in and see him having a mental breakdown, but he couldn't stop crying, his unsteady grip on his stability turning into dust that slipped between his fingers. He was still scared and tired and confused and he _couldn't sleep._

The door cracked open and Peter curled further into himself to hide his tear-streaked face, wishing that whoever it was would just turn around and pretend they didn't see anything.

At the same time, two people spoke over one another.

"Oh my god."

"Oh shit."

Peter's shoulders began shaking even more violently when he realized it was Ms. Potts and Colonel Rhodes.

_Great. Just great, Parker. Now they think you're some gigantic weirdo that cries in elevators._

There was a second that nobody moved. Peter could only keep crying, still pressed against the walls of the elevator, unable to get in even a single breath between the sobs and the panicking. Then Rhodey sighed and crossed the space between them, placing a hand on Peter's shoulder. He knew what to do. He'd dealt with similar situations before with Tony, after all. "Hey, kid, come on. Just breathe for me, okay? Inhale, exhale. You're alright."

But nothing was alright.

When Peter closed his eyes, his vision still dissolved into images of merciless fire and darkness and blood.

Nothing would ever be alright.

"What do you want, hm? Will getting Tony here help?"

Mr. Stark would only think that Peter was being stupid. Or maybe he'd think that Peter was a mess and he'd say that Peter shouldn't be Spider-Man anymore and that would bring them all back to box one.

He knew it was a mistake even before he went after Toomes, knew that taking someone on without a suit to protect him had been stupid. He knew it. But he couldn't stop. It was arrogance or naivete or some false sense of self. He just couldn't stop because it was Mr. Stark that was being threatened. And Peter had lost enough. He thought he was defending Mr. Stark but when it all came down to it, he hadn't even done a lot. The plane crashed. The tools and weapons were damaged. Toomes wasn't even captured by Peter so much as his wing broke and Peter webbed him up while he was down.

Peter made a mess wherever he went. The situation with Toomes was no exception.

He heard Rhodey tell Pepper something but the voices sounded far-off and warped and Peter swore that he could hear everything happening within a mile's distance but also nothing at all. He vaguely heard someone tell him to breathe but he couldn't. Nothing felt real, his blood ringing in his ears and his fingers tingling. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine he was a disembodied being, both not real and real at the same time.

_This is too much._

The lights burned his eyes and his brain went into overload, struggling to process every piece of sensory information that flitted through it. His clothes rubbed against his skin and it  _hurt_. The perfume Pepper wore reached his nostrils and he coughed, trying to breathe but there were too many things in the air and he  _couldn't._

He felt like an eternity shoved into a tiny hapless vessel too small and weak to contain it.

"Peter?"

"It's too much," Peter said. "Everything's too much. Make it stop."

_Please please please please please please please please please please please_

The hand on his shoulder moved to his forearms, Rhodey swearing softly as he pulled Peter upwards. When someone held his arms to keep him on his feet, Peter realized he was speaking out loud, but even then he couldn't stop.

Then someone was putting headphones over his ears and everything shifted as he was lifted and pressed against someone's chest. He didn't move as the person began walking, arms wrapped around him like he was something fragile, steady and strong around him. They stopped but Peter's tears didn't.

Time passed in a blur.

Peter read online once that anxiety could cause that.

It took him a while to finally work up to open his eyes but when he did, he was in the middle of a dim room. The first thing he noticed was Rhodey sitting on the sofa, looking at him with a small sad-happy smile like he was glad that Peter was done crying but sad that Peter cried in the first place.

"Pyotr," he heard, looking up see that the person who held him was none other than the Thunderer himself. Thor, Son of Odin, was currently carrying Peter in his arms. "Are you well now, young one?"

Peter turned bright red, nodding and shifting so that Thor would let go of him. He shifted from foot to foot, looking at Thor meekly. "Um, yeah. Thanks, man- I mean, thank you, sir. Mr. Thor. The God of Thunder."

Thor merely let out a laugh, grinning at Peter and then looking at the space over Peter's shoulder. "I rather like this one. Your son is a fine man indeed, Anthony."

Son?

Anthony?

Oh, _wait_.

Peter whirled around to see Mr. Stark standing there, looking at Peter with a sad-sad expression. He stepped forward, placing a hand on Peter's arm. "Hey, kid. How are you doing? Sorry that we had to get Thor to carry you but none of us got the feeling that staying in the elevator would have helped. Rhodey can't exactly carry you and my back is, unfortunately, not what it used to be so the only option was to have this lumbering muscle god to carry you here. Are you good?"

Peter nodded.

Right. The elevator. The images of-

"How do you do it?" Peter asked hoarsely, finding his mouth dry as the Sahara as he stood in front of Mr. Stark. "How do you deal with the nightmares and the memories? When does it stop- When can I-"

Mr. Stark seemed to understand, letting out a sigh and squeezing Peter's arm. He looked older suddenly as if he'd aged years in seconds. The dim lighting cast harsh shadows on his face, and Peter thought he very much looked like a fallen angel at that moment. He looked like a broken angel with steel featherless wings and an insatiable hunger for the stars, yearning so much it broke him.

"It fades, usually, given time to heal and mend and… recover. Talking to people helps too, sometimes. It depends on what caused the nightmares. And the truth is it won't fade completely but you'll learn how to deal with it."

It won't fade completely.

But you'll learn how to deal with it.

 _Is that why,_ Peter wanted to ask. _Is that why you keep everyone at arm's length? Is that why you never want to sleep? Is that why you're always so sad when you're alone?_

When Peter first stepped onto the compound it was a lonely place, a place with only robots and AI's and half-made devices that gave the illusion of life. But they weren't alive. Not really. They were only alive on the surface but if you dug a little deeper, you'd find it was all wires and broken dreams underneath- just like Tony.

But in time it changed. Peter began spending more time over, the guest bedroom- one of many- became more personal, less empty and more homely. The lounge was slowly filled with pictures and the trinkets that Peter liked to give Tony from his missions, things that reminded him of Tony or science or superheroes. The place became just a bit more alive, less monochrome, less depressing, less lonesome.

"Tell me what happened, Pete," Tony asked, voice as gentle and soft as Thor had ever heard it. So Peter did, telling him in excruciating detail to keep the details from piercing deeper still into his soul. Thor left at some point, and in the end, it's only him and Mr. Stark sitting on the couch, talking over a box of pizza.

Mr. Stark gave him advice, let him cry on his shoulder (pretty literally), gave him a number that would directly connect to him just in case if the situation called for it.

"Hey, you're tired. Sleep. I'll call May, tell her you're staying over," Mr. Stark said, seeing Peter's half-closed eyes. Peter shook his head slightly, rubbing his hands over his eyes. "It's alright, kid. You obviously need to sleep- finals be damned. I'll be proud of you even if you got a zero. It's okay, Pete. I'll be right here. You're safe."

So Peter let Mr. Stark place a blanket on top of him and closed his eyes, his body relaxing as slumber claimed him.

For the first time in a while, he slept without nightmares, dreaming instead of breath-taking feathered wings and soft molten gold halos, shrouded in a soft tunic as he walked through the snow-covered fields.

When he woke, he wasn't alone.

Peter felt a little less tired.

His mind was a little quieter, the memories not pulling at him like hungry souls reaching for light anymore, and his chest felt just a little bit lighter.

Maybe, just maybe, things might turn out alright.

**Author's Note:**

> Let's all pretend that Thor came to live at the tower after Ragnarok, okay? 
> 
> Okay. 
> 
> Not beta-read, obviously. In this house we die like men.


End file.
